ia, and to serve
your art there shall be a beloved duty."

His power of resistance was broken; yet he beckoned to his slave Bias,
who was busied with the mixing jars, and ordered him to seek Ledscha and
tell her not to wait longer; urgent duties detained him.

While he was giving this direction, Althea had become engaged in the
gay conversation of the others, and, as Thyone called Hermon, and he
was also obliged to speak to Daphne, he could not again obtain an
opportunity for private talk with the wonderful woman who held out far
grander prospects for his art than the refractory, rude Biamite maiden.

Soon Althea's performance seemed to prove how fortunate a choice he had
made. Her Arachne appeared like a revelation to him. If she kept her
promise, and he succeeded in modelling her in the pose assumed while
imagining the process of transformation, and presented her idea to the
spectators, the great success which hitherto--because he had not
yielded to demands which were opposed to his convictions--he had vainly
expected, could no longer escape him. The Alexandrian fellow-artists who
belonged to his party would gratefully welcome this special work; for
what grew out of it would have nothing in common with the fascination
of superhuman beauty, by which the older artists ensnared the hearts and
minds of the multitude. He would create a genuine woman, who would not
lack defects, yet who, though she inspired neither gratification nor
rapture, would touch, perhaps even thrill, the heart by absolute truth.

While Althea was standing on the pedestal, she had not only represented
the transformation into the spider, but experienced it, and the features
of the spectators revealed that they believed they were witnessing
the sinister event. His aim was now to awaken the same feeling in the
beholders of his Arachne. Nothing, nothing at all must be changed in
the figure of the model, in which many might miss the roundness and
plumpness so pleasing to the eye. Althea's very defects would perfect
the figure of the restless, wretched weaver whom Athene transformed into
the spider.

While devoting himself to nursing his friend, he had thought far less of
the new love-happiness which, in spite of her swift flight, was probably
awaiting him through Althea than of the work which was to fill his
existence in the immediate future.

His healthy body, steeled in the palaestra, felt no fatigue after the
sleepless night passed amid so many p